Traczyk, 41, was convicted last month of first-degree murder. Judge Karen
Herman was scheduled to formally impose the mandatory sentence -- life in prison
without the possibility of parole -- on Thursday morning.

Instead, she denied Traczyk's motion for a new trial and his attorney accepted a 24-hour sentencing delay.

Herman will impose the sentence Friday morning.

"I'm going to finally be at peace," Pasternak's wife, Merisa Aranas
Pasternak, said Thursday after she testified at the sentencing hearing. "But we're the lucky ones
-- we survived."

Traczyk, a New Jersey native with a decade-long history of schizophrenia and
paranoia, lived near Pal's and went to the bar that night to find his landlord,
who had evicted him. He showed her his military awards, attempting to convince
her to change her mind. She didn't.

Erik Traczyk will be sentenced to life Friday after being convicted in the murder of Nia Robertson.Times-Picayune archive

So Traczyk roamed down the bar and randomly slashed the two victims -- first
Pasternak, then Robertson -- then calmly walked out the front door.

Robertson, a friendly regular at the bar, asked "Why me?" as she lay dying on
the floor.

Police found Traczyk on the front steps of his nearby apartment, still
gripping the knife that killed her.

He had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

"I could talk about the survivor's guilt. I could talk about the nightmares,
about having to have my back against a wall in bars and restaurants. And I can
deal with those things for a time," Pasternak testified at the sentencing hearing
Thursday. "The harder thing to deal with is that loss of security."

The couple described their struggle in the aftermath of the slashing --
learning the young woman, a stranger to them, had been killed; seeing her
grieving family at the hospital.

They'd been trying to have a baby and miscarried.

"That day, Aug. 15, 2007, you almost broke us, our spirit and our will to
live in this city that we really love," Merisa Pasternak testified.

Eventually, they had a child, now 4 years old, and Pasternak wonders how he'll explain the scars on his neck.

The couple celebrated their 10th
wedding anniversary, but always with the date Aug. 15, 2007, on the edge of their
consciousness.

"You were one dress shirt away from taking that away from me," Merisa
Pasternak told Traczyk on Thursday. "Nia was not lucky at all. She does not have
these past five years. She doesn't get married. She doesn't have children."